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The drumbeat of war

With all eyes on Europe, Chicagoans feared conflict was inevitable

By Ron Grossman

November 27, 2011

On the Thanksgiving before Pearl Harbor, Chicagoans had a foreboding sense of being inexorably sucked into a far-away maelstrom.

Nazi armies had conquered much of Europe. Just England and a badly battered Soviet Union still stood in opposition. The question seemed to be not if, but when, the U.S. would enter World War II, which had begun two years earlier.

"Never before has our country gone into a war so greatly divided on the question, wherefore arise many misgivings of the ultimate result," the Tribune predicted, a month before Japan's surprise attack, 70 years ago this December.

In a letter to the editor, a reader pleaded that, having talked to "plenty of 'common' people," he could report "the rank and file do not want war."

Technically neutral in the autumn of 1941, America was supplying England with critical war materiel and patrolling Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes to keep that aid flowing. A military draft had been established, and civilian life was being reshaped.

"At least 70,000 American youths will be deprived of college or university this year as a result of the national preparedness program," the Trib reported of young men who would be going not to campus, but to boot camp.

A number of local American Legion posts moved up their Armistice Day commemorations, since Nov. 11 fell on a Tuesday and veterans of the Great War were working in defense plants as America hastily re-armed. Under a headline "War Taking the Spice Out of Thanksgiving," the paper noted shortages of celery, mustard and poppy seeds.

Hollywood was on a war footing. "A Yank in the RAF" was playing at the Chicago Theatre; the Roosevelt Theater was showing "Sergeant York," a silver-screen biography of the great World War I hero.

Occasionally there was ominous news from the Far East: Militaristic Japan attacking neighbors and bombing cities. Opposed to its expansion in China and nearby countries, the U.S. had cut off exports of oil to Japan earlier in the year. But Chicagoans' eyes principally were turned toward Europe — especially after German submarines sank the U.S. destroyer Reuben James off the coast of Iceland on Oct. 31.

In the jargon of the day, those who wanted to repay that deadly attack were called "interventionists." Those waging a rear-guard action against joining the fray dubbed their cause "America First." One of its arguments was that entering the war would mean fighting alongside the Soviet Union, no less a totalitarian regime than Nazi Germany. To dramatize their position, members of a Lincoln Park anti-war group staged a mock wedding in which Josef Stalin married the Statue of Liberty.

Then came a three-paragraph news item, seemingly innocuous at the time, so telling in retrospect: Though President Franklin Roosevelt had decreed moving Thanksgiving up to Nov. 20, he was putting off his own celebration until the traditional date, the last Thursday of the month. A White House representative attributed the postponement to "pending American-Japanese discussions."

NEXT WEEK: Special expanded coverage of the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor continues Dec. 4.